Jjajangmyeon: Korean Black Bean Noodles
Note: This is not your classic jjajangmyeon (짜장면). A typical bowl of Korean black bean noodles contains pork belly, onion, white wheat flour noodles, potato starch, and sugar. Some people also add rice wine, boiled egg as a topping, and the fat from the pork belly for extra flavor. My version is low fat and low sugar. I’ve substituted the flour noodles with a wheat-free variation and traded in fatty cuts of meat for a leaner option.
When filming mukbang videos, I showcase cuisines from around the world. Normally I buy the food. This week I challenged myself to cook something experimental. The following recipe is the exact dish I ate during my mukbang video.
INGREDIENTS
3 zucchini (aka: Italian squash)
6 ounces pork strips
8.6 ounces Vietnamese brown rice noodles
24 ounces Korean radish
1/2 cup fermented chungjang (Korean black bean paste)
8 cloves of garlic (or more, depending on how much you love it)
1 bouquet of kale
1 cucumber for garnish
coconut oil for cooking
The total cost? $20 US and makes up to 4 servings. One serving if you’re an original Korean mukbang star (the type that livestreams on afreecaTV).
There was a variety of chunjang at the Korean market, all of them at different prices and in container sizes. I chose the small jar of fermented chunjang, which is more than enough for this recipe.
Step 1
Cut your veggies. Sizes and the level of neatness vary with each cook. Most jjajangmyeon I’ve eaten had small pieces of vegetables. Later when the sauce covers them, these ingredients will camouflage. I like to tell my veggies apart, therefore my pieces are bigger. Keep in mind that thicker cubes of radish take longer to cook. If you’re hangry, small cubes are your best friend.
Peel and cut zucchinis. Not a fan? Some Koreans use mushroom and cabbage as well.
In the case I end up with extra sauce and my noodles are drowning in it, I will add steamed kale instead of additional noodles. Koreans also eat their jjajangmyeon sauce with white rice. Brown rice and quinoa can be used as substitutes. I choose kale to squeeze fiber into my diet.
Step 2
Heat your pan and add oil. Some use canola or vegetable oil for their jjajangmyeon, but this is my kitchen. I use coconut oil. Or olive oil. However I ran out of olive oil, so coconut oil it is.
Stir-fry your protein. I added a handful of garlic into the pan.
Step 3
After about five minutes, pour the vegetables into the pan. If you’d like to sweeten your dish, add onions.
Step 4
Add a cup of water and 1/2 cup of chunjang (black bean paste) into the pan. Stir so the paste coats the ingredients.
Let that H2O work its magic. Give it about 15 minutes. It will come to a boil. You can gently poke a piece of radish with a fork to confirm its softness.
Witness the ingredients absorb the paste!
Step 5
Fill a pot with water and let it boil over high heat. Cook your noodles. In my case, I use Vietnamese Brown Rice Noodles by StarAniseFoods (no, this is not a sponsored post. I’m just letting you know the brand I used). These noodles takes about a minute to cook. Drain the noodles and pour on sesame or olive oil to keep them separated.
Step 6
Set your noodles in a bowl, pour in the sauce and vegetables, and cut fresh cucumber for garnish. I used a shorter plate for filming purposes; if the dish is too deep, then the viewers cannot see the food. In terms of functionality, a deeper bowl may be easier to mix the noodles in.
Lessons learned from this week’s cooking session:
add more oil to the noodles to prevent them from sticking
make more sauce by adding additional water and paste
Watch me eat this plate of jjajangmyeon in my mukbang video!
